ABU DHABI, UAE – UAE Ministry of Culture and Youth participated in the UNESCO World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development – MONDIACULT 2022 which took place in Mexico.
A delegation headed by Salem Al Qasimi, Permanent Delegate of the UAE to UNESCO, was present on the occasion which took place from September 28-30, 2022 while Noura bint Mohammed Al Kaabi, Minister of Culture and Youth, participated via video conference.
Al Kaabi spoke extensively about the growing importance of the creative economy in a post-pandemic world shedding light on how the UAE was leveraging the cultural and creative industries to diversify its economy.
“The UAE has recognized the growing power of the cultural and creative industries within the wider economy, as well as its vulnerability to unpredictable events,” she said.
“The CCI contribute to 3.5 percent of the UAE’s GDP and are projected to grow to 5 percent by 2031. Within this context, we moved quickly to adapt our strategy and policy work in this area accordingly, both on a federal and local level,” Al Kaabi said.
“The UAE Culture Agenda 2031 was launched in 2018, as the first nationwide strategy unifying the efforts of the national culture sector,” she said.
Speaking about the impact of the pandemic and how the CCI would realign to the transformations, she said that although the COVID-19 pandemic was detrimental to the CCI sector, the UAE was quick to adapt to the situation by appropriate policy intervention.
“We launched the National Creative Relief Fund to mitigate the pandemic’s financial impact by offering relief packages to creative practitioners and SMEs,” Al Kaabi said.
“Our cultural operators stepped in to provide economic catalysts, digital activation, and free access to knowledge and content to sustain the creative spirit. We also boosted the Golden Visa Scheme to sustain the livelihoods of creative practitioners in the UAE,” she said.
Al Kaabi touched upon the Creative UAE strategy and the Framework for Culture and Arts Education presented by the UAE at the 211th session of the Executive Board of UNESCO.
Stressing the UAE’s future-focused approach, she added, “The UAE will continue to develop future-forward policy support, and appropriate funding mechanisms to sustain the CCI sector through institutional collaboration and interdisciplinary knowledge.”
Al Kaabi wrapped up the session by saying that stakeholders should jointly resolve to design policy and partnerships based on a spirit of collaboration and openness, one that can lift the communities in the present and the future.
The three-day international conference hosted a number of side events on mobilizing cultural policies to tackle global challenges for a more robust and resilient cultural sector.
Ebtesam Saif Al Zaabi, International Organizations Expert, United Arab Emirates National Commission for Education, Culture and Science (UAE NATCOM) spoke in detail about the UAE’s inimitable network of libraries and how it was a key contributor in the nation’s drive towards a knowledge-based economy.
She also referred to the UAE-led Framework for Culture and Arts Education and how libraries were intrinsic to it for their role in fostering life-long education.